9th Sunday after Pentecost – July 21, 2013
Epistle, 1 Corinthians 10: 6-13 Gospel, Luke 19: 41-47
Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He was the promised Messiah and
brought great graces to His chosen people, but they would not accept Him. He
cried over the loss of so many souls. With all that Jesus has done for us, beginning
with the creation of the universe, through His Passion and gruesome death, and
continuing with the gift of Himself in the Eucharist and the forgiveness of
sins in the Sacrament of Confession, how is it possible that any soul could ignore
Him or reject Him?
Do we know the value of our souls? We know that, like
God, our souls will continue to exist eternally. Do we know the true beauty and
perfection of these souls created by God.? We are created in the image and
likeness of God, and that image is reflected in our soul’s ability to reason,
to love and to act on our own free will. Our reason allows us to recognize the
perfections and beauty of God. Our soul is loved by the Three Persons in God
Who created it, and we in turn show our love to Him by adoring Him in all His
works, and adoring Him throughout eternity.
Our soul has the free will to adore God or not adore Him. But those who do adore Him know a happy life
because God resides in their souls, and because of this, they know happiness no
matter how difficult life becomes.
God has put in our souls desires that cannot be fulfilled
in our lives. We are poor in spirit, but
ready to bear a painful and humble life. We mourn the loss of our loved ones,
even while we pray in hope for their souls. We are meek, but suffer abuse by
the strong. We hunger and thirst for
justice, but always come up short. We are merciful to others, but are scorned by
many. We may be pure in heart, but in
our lives we must deal with other hearts filled with hatred. We try to make
peace among those who profit from controversy and war, but again are scorned
and ignored. And we are persecuted for
the sake of righteousness, but continue to live and preach it. Jesus tells us that “Blessed” are
those who suffer these things. To be blessed in this sense means to be honored,
made holy. In other words, to be invited
into God’s kingdom where we will see Him face to face, and where all the good
and all the pleasure we could ever hope for on earth will be ours.
We will never be fully
satisfied in this life for the reason that God has created our souls for
Himself. As St. Augustine put it: “Lord,
You have formed us for Yourself, and our
hearts are restless ‘till they find rest in You.”
God
well knows the value of our souls. He could find no worthier gift for us than
His own Body and Blood in the Eucharist.
Our soul is so precious in His eyes that He even assigned an angel to
look after each one He Created, our Guardian Angel. St. Bernard wrote, “How happy we are that our
bodies harbor a soul which is adorned by such beautiful graces.” Knowing the value of souls so well, is it
any wonder that our Lord wept bitterly over their loss?
Before
God had the human eyes of His Son to weep with, He borrowed the eyes of His prophets
who spoke repeatedly of mourning and weeping, both in repentance and because of
the destruction God rains upon us because of our sins. We are miserable when we
destroy our soul with sin. It’s like forced dialog in a “B” movie – we know people
don’t really talk like that, just as we know that people aren’t really happy
when they live in sin, no matter how much force themselves to think they are. The Prophet Joel (1: 8) tells us to weep
at the loss of souls, as a young wife who has just lost her husband. The loss of a soul is a great tragedy.
To
understand the value of your soul consider, firstly, that only God, Himself, in
the Person of His only Son, Jesus, could pay the price, to Himself, to redeem
our souls from the Original Sin of Adam and Eve. And, second, notice that during
all our lives we are tempted by Satan to sin and to destroy our soul. It is
enough to know he is our enemy, and only with Christ’s grace can we overcome
him. Considering this, we can understand
that the only thing we own that has intrinsic or real value is our soul. We
often think that gold has intrinsic value, but we cannot take gold into
eternity with us. Now we can easily answer
the question that Jesus asked: “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the
whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Mark 8: 36) It profits him nothing, because to suffer the loss
of our soul is to suffer the loss of everything of value. +++
(Thanks to St. John Vianney, Curé of Ars)
We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass
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